Monday, December 1, 2008

I've got this big test over the next two days in school. It's the one that determines if I get out of the SFI (Swedish For Immigrants) class or not. The teachers tell me that I'll do fine. There's a rumor that no one ever fails it. But I want to do well, you know? So I'm reviewing all of my material from the last 3 months and feeling like if I try to cram anything else in there it'll just fall out.

I would like to be able to just let it be, you know? Forget about it. Play some God of War. Figure that nothing I do now will affect the test tomorrow. But I really hate getting bad scores on tests. At least if I study hard and then don't do well I can feel like I did my best.

The cool thing is that I haven't ever thought like this before. In all my years of school I just sort of got by. Luckily, I tested well without a lot of effort. But I regret not learning things as deeply as I could have. So I'm suddenly doing school in a completely new way. You know. Like doing homework and stuff.

But then I always have this nagging voice in my head that says snap out of it. I'm too old. I should have just stayed in the US and kept my job. The money was good and I had opportunities to improve. I seriously want to punch that voice.

But the truth is that no matter what I do I'm going to regret what I didn't do. That's getting more clear to me as I get older. I think our generation is most attuned to that reality. Never before have the blue-collar Joes of the world had such a poverty of choices. If you have ever felt paralyzed by the fear of heading in the wrong direction, as I think you probably have, then you know what I mean. It makes the roots of nostalgia that much easier to understand, if you ask me.

But you didn't. Ha! I just couldn't keep thinking in simple Swedish phrases any longer. After pontificating like this, though, I do feel better. Thanks for reading along.